Mittens and masks: Meme commentary on the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The Inauguration of Joe Biden led to the creation of the Bernie Sanders and his Mittens meme, which had a mask-wearing Sanders huddled on a folding chair (socially distanced) wearing his hand-knitted mittens watching the inauguration. Individuals and organizations crafted their own versions with Sanders (and his mittens) appearing everywhere from The Muppet Show to Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper. These memes have a connection to the pandemic focusing on aspects related to the pandemic such as social distancing, mask wearing, and isolation. This article serves two purposes, the first uses humor theories and their functions combined with the rhetoric of intertextuality to analyze how these memes functioned and thus provided commentary about life during a pandemic. These memes provided stress relief using humor, but also united people, created community, and established an archive of the time during the pandemic. The second purpose applies the classical rhetorical canon to memes thus exploring how memes can be relevant tools for teaching digital rhetoric.